CVE-2023-37481: Fides Webserver Vulnerable to SVG Bomb File Uploads

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-07-18 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform for managing data privacy requests and privacy regulations. The Fides webserver is vulnerable to a type of Denial of Service (DoS) attack. Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to upload zip files containing malicious SVG bombs (similar to a billion laughs attack), causing resource exhaustion in Admin UI browser tabs and creating a persistent denial of service of the 'new connector' page (`datastore-connection/new`). This vulnerability affects Fides versions `2.11.0` through `2.15.1`. Exploitation is limited to users with elevated privileges with the `CONNECTOR_TEMPLATE_REGISTER` scope, which includes root users and users with the owner role. The vulnerability has been patched in Fides version `2.16.0`. Users are advised to upgrade to this version or later to secure their systems against this threat. There is no known workaround to remediate this vulnerability without upgrading.

Affected products

ethyca fides: from 2.11.0 before 2.16.0 — fixed in 2.16.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: ethyca fides 2.16.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2023-37481 or the next vulnerability affects your stack